Anatoly Tikhonovich Marchenko (Russian: Анато́лий Ти́хонович Ма́рченко, 23 January 1938 – 8 December 1986) was a Soviet dissident, author, and human rights campaigner, who became one of the first two recipients (along with Nelson Mandela) of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought of the European Parliament when it was awarded to him posthumously in 1988.

Marchenko, originally an apolitical oil driller from a poor background, turned to writing and politics as a result of several episodes of incarceration starting in 1958, during which he began to associate with other dissidents.

[1][2][3] Marchenko gained international fame in 1969 through his book, My Testimony, an autobiographical account written after his arrival in Moscow in 1966 about his then-recent sentences in Soviet labour camps and prisons.

[8] The widespread international outcry over his death was a major factor in finally pushing then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to authorize the large-scale amnesty of political prisoners in 1987.

Anatoly Tikhonovich Marchenko was born on 23 January 1938, in Barabinsk, Novosibirsk Oblast, in the Siberia region of the Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, to illiterate railway workers from a peasant background.

On 3 March 1961, he was convicted for treason and was sentenced to six-years in labour camp, officially designating Marchenko a political prisoner, not an ordinary criminal as he was previously.

Marchenko was released on 2 November 1966, and spent months travelling through the Russian SFSR, trying to find a locality which would allow him register to live there.

From May 1968, while still formally living in Alexandrov, Marchenko was working in Moscow as a loader, the only job available to him, even though doctors had warned him not to do hard manual labour.

During this time he had met several fellow dissidents, including Larisa Bogoraz, the wife of his associate Yuli Daniel, who were in the process of legal separation.

On 5 September 1967, Marchenko announced to the authorities his association with the dissident circle by appearing at a search of the apartment of the mother of Alexander Ginzburg, the subject of another famous show trial.

On 22 July 1968, he wrote an open letter to a variety of publications, including Communist party media in the West, about the situation there, predicting that the Soviet Union would not allow the 'Prague Spring' to continue.

On 21 August, the same day that the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia as he had predicted it would, he was sentenced to the maximum penalty for that crime, one-year in a labor camp.

Tarusa was a little over 100 kilometers from Moscow, so Marchenko and Bogoraz were able to maintain contact with dissident circles in the capital, which were being increasingly repressed as they more openly challenged the government.

On 23 August 1973, Marchenko wrote to Kurt Waldheim, then-Secretary-General of the United Nations, expressing concern about the condition of another imprisoned writer.

In response to his refusal to cooperate in any way, on 26 February 1975, he was again arrested, and charged with violating the "administrative supervision" measures which had been imposed on him the previous summer.

An account in the samizdat periodical, A Chronicle of Current Events, details his life hitherto and the subsequent trial at the Kaluga City Court.

During this entire period, he received no special treatment, and was handled just like all the other prisoners, only giving up on 21 April (53 days after it had begun) when it became clear to him that he was at risk of death.

The publication of this new book lead to his final arrest in 1980, and on 3 September 1981, Marchenko went on trial again for "anti-Soviet agitation", and the next day was given a 15-year sentence: 10-years of imprisonment and 5-years of internal exile.

Details about Marchenko's last period of imprisonment are largely unknown, although in December 1983 he was badly beaten by guards, and fell unconscious as a result.

Marchenko died not long before Gorbachev's announcement - ironically from the effects of a hunger strike demanding the release of all Soviet political prisoners.

With its spirit of morality through non-violent struggle for justice, with its aspiration towards unconcealed and complete truth, the book aroused the hatred of the organs of repression towards its author.